The Aquitaine Progression (61 page)

“It wasn’t an issue.”

“Of course it wasn’t. It warped the pattern; it bent the shapes Joel Converse wouldn’t bend! The answer is
zero
, Larry. He wouldn’t
do
it, any of it! He thought one day more of that war was one more day in hell too long. He refused to lend his name.”

“What are you trying to say?” said Talbot sternly.

“Halliday wasn’t his enemy, not the way you’re trying to paint him. The brushstrokes aren’t there. They’re not on the canvas.”

“Your metaphors are more than I can handle, Val. What are you trying to tell me?”

“That something smells, Larry. It’s so rotten I can hardly breathe, but the stench isn’t coming from my former husband. It’s coming from all of you.”

“I have to take exception to that. All I want to do is help, I thought you knew that.”

“I do, really I do. It’s not your fault. Good-bye, Larry.”

“I’ll call you the minute I learn anything.”

“Do that. Good-bye.” Valerie hung up the phone and looked at her watch. It was time to get down to Logan Airport in Boston to pick up Roger Converse.

“Köln in zehn Minuten!”
shouted the voice over the loudspeaker.

Converse sat by the window, his face next to the glass, as the towns sped by on the way to Cologne—Bornheim, Wesel, Brühl. The train was perhaps three-quarters full, which was to say that each double seat had at least one occupant. When they pulled out of the station a woman had been sitting where he sat now, a fashionably dressed suburbanite. Several seats behind them another woman—a friend—spotted her. His seatmate spoke to Joel. The brief attention she had called to both of them when he could not reply unnerved him. He shrugged and shook his head; she exhaled impatiently, got up in irritation and joined her friend.

She had left a newspaper behind, the same newspaper with his photograph on the front page, which remained flat out on the seat. He stared at it until he realized what he was doing and instantly shifted seats, picking up the paper and folding it so that the picture would be out of sight. He glanced around cautiously, holding his hand casually above his lips, frowning, pensive, trying to seem like a man in thought whose eyes saw nothing. But he had seen another pair of eyes and they were studying him—staring at him while the owner was engaged in what appeared to be a lively conversation with an elderly woman next to him. The man had looked away, and Converse had a brief half-second to observe the face before he turned to the window. He knew that face; he had talked to that man, but he could not remember where it was or when it was, only that they had spoken. The realization was as maddening as it was frightening.
Where was it? When was it?
Did the man know him, know his
name?

If the man did, he had done nothing about it. He had returned his concentration to the woman, the conversation still lively. Joel tried to picture the whole man; perhaps it would help. He was large, not so much in height as in girth, and on the surface jovial, but Converse sensed a meanness in him. Was that now or before? When was before?
Where?
Ten minutes or so had passed since the exchange of looks, and Joel was no further ahead in peeling away the layers of memory. He was stymied and afraid.

“
Wir kommen in zwei Minuten in Köln an. Bitte achten Sie auf Ihr Gepäck!
”

A number of passengers got up from their seats, tugging at their jackets and skirts, reaching for luggage. As the train began to slow down, Converse pressed his forehead against the cool glass of the window. He let his mind go slack, unfocused, expecting the next few minutes to tell him what to do.

The minutes passed, the suspension on hold, his mind blank as passengers got off and others got in, many carrying attaché cases, several very much like his own, which he had left in a trash can in Bonn. He had wanted to keep it but he could not. It had been a gift from Valerie, as his gold pen was a gift, both initialed in those better days.… No, not better, he told himself, simply different. Nothing was better or worse; there were no comparisons where commitments were concerned.
They either stuck or they did not. Theirs came unstuck.

Then why, he asked himself, as the train ground to a stop at Cologne, had he sent the contents of his briefcase to Val? His answer was the essence of logic, he thought. She would know what to do; the others would not. Talbot, Brooks and Simon were out. His sister, Virginia, was even further out. His father? The fly-boy with a sense of responsibility that went as far as his last wing dip? It could not be the pilot. He loved old Roger, more than he suspected Roger loved him, but the pilot could never come to grips with the ground. Hard earth meant relationships, and old Roger never knew how to handle them, even with a wife he claimed to have loved dearly. The doctors said she had died of a coronary occlusion; her son thought it was from neglect. Roger was not on the scene, had not been for several weeks. So that left Valerie … his once and former Valerie.

“
Entschuldigen Sie. Ist dieser Platz frei?
” The intruding voice came from a man about his own age, carrying an attaché case.

Joel nodded, assuming the words referred to the empty seat beside him.

“
Danke
,” said the man, sitting down, the attaché case at his feet. He withdrew a newspaper from under his left arm and snapped it open. Converse tensed as he saw his photograph, his own serious face staring at him. He turned again to the window, pulling the soft brim of the hat lower, his face down, hoping he looked like an exhausted traveler wishing only to catch a few minutes’ sleep. Moments later, as the train started forward, he had an inkling that he had succeeded.

“
Verrückt, nicht wahr?
” said the man with the attaché case reading the newspaper.

Joel stirred and blinked open his eyes beneath the brim of the hat. “Umm?”

“
Schade
,” added the man, his right hand separated from the paper in a gesture of apology.

Converse settled back against the window, the coolness of the glass an anchor, his eyes closed, the darkness more welcome than he could ever remember.… No, that was not true; he remembered to the contrary. In the camps there were moments when he was not sure he could keep up the façade of strength and revolt, when everything in him wanted to capitulate, to hear even a few kind words, to see a smile that had
meaning. Then the darkness would come and he would cry, the tears drenching his face. And when they stopped, the anger would be inexplicably restored. Somehow the tears had cleansed him, purged the doubts and the fears and made him whole again. And angry again.

“
Wir kommen in fünf Minuten in Düsseldorf an!
”

Joel bolted forward, his neck painfully stiff, his head cold. He had dozed for a considerable length of time, judging from the stiffness above his shoulder blades. The man beside him was reading and marking a report of some kind, the attaché case on his lap, the newspaper folded neatly between himself and Converse, folded maddeningly with his photograph in clear view. The man opened his case, put the report inside, and snapped it shut. He turned to Converse.

“
Der Zug ist pünklich
,” he said, nodding his head.

Joel nodded back, suddenly aware that the passenger across the aisle had gotten up with the elderly woman, shaking her hand and replying to something she had said. But he was not looking at her; his eyes had strayed over to Converse. Joel slumped back into the seat and the window, resuming the appearance of a weary traveler, the soft brim of his hat pulled down to the rims of his glasses. Who
was
that man? If they knew each other, how could he be silent under the circumstances? How could he simply look over now and then and casually return to his conversation with the woman? At the very least, he would have to betray some sense of alarm or fear, or, at the minimum, excited recognition.

The train began to slow down, the metallic grinding of the steel plates against the huge wheels swelling; soon the whistles would commence for their arrival in Düsseldorf. Converse wondered if the German next to him would get off. He had closed his attaché case but made no preliminary moves to rise and join the line forming at the forward door. Instead, he picked up the newspaper, opening it, mercifully, to an inside page.

The train stopped, passengers disembarked and others got on board—mostly women with shopping boxes and plastic bags emblazoned with the logos of expensive boutiques and recognizable names in the fashion industry. The train to Emmerich was a suburban “mink run,” as Val used to call the afternoon trains from New York to Westchester and Connecticut. Joel saw that the man from across the aisle had walked the elderly woman up to the rear of the line, again shaking
her hand solicitously before sidestepping his way back toward his seat. Converse turned his face to the glass, his head bowed, and closed his eyes.

“
Bitte, können wir die Plätze tauschen? Dieser Herr ist ein Bekannter. Ich sitze in der nächsten Reihe
.”

“
Sicher, aber er schläft ja doch nur
.”

“
Ich wecke ihn
,” said Converse’s seatmate, laughing and getting up. The man from across the aisle had changed seats. He sat down next to Joel.

Converse stretched, covering a yawn with his left hand, his right slipping under his jacket to the handle of the gun he had taken from Leifhelm’s chauffeur. If it became necessary, he would show that gun to his new yet familiar companion. The train started, the noise below growing in volume; it was the moment. Joel turned to the man, his eyes knowing but conveying nothing.

“I
figured
it was you,” said the man, obviously an American, grinning broadly but not attractively.

Converse had been right, there was a meanness about the obese man; he heard it in the voice as he had heard it before—but where he did not remember. “Are you sure?” asked Joel.

“Sure I’m sure. But I’ll bet you’re not, are you?”

“Frankly, no.”

“I’ll give you a hint. I can always spot a good ole Yank! Only made a couple of mistakes in all the years of hopping around selling my li’l ole line of look-alike, almost originals.”

“Copenhagen,” said Converse, remembering with distaste waiting for his luggage with the man. “And one of your mistakes was in Rome when you thought an Italian was a Hispanic from Florida.”

“You got it! That guinea bastard had me buffaloed, figured him for a spik with a lot of bread—probably from running dope, you know what I mean? You know how they are, how they cornered the market from the Keys up.… Say, what’s your name again?”

“Rogers,” replied Joel for no other reason than the fact that he had been thinking about his father a while ago. “You speak German,” he added, making a statement.

“Shit, I’d better. West Germany’s just about our biggest market. My old man was a Kraut; it’s all he spoke.”

“What do you sell?”

“The best imitations on Seventh Avenue, but don’t get
me wrong, I’m not one of the Jew boys. You take a Balenciaga, right? You change a few buttons and a few pleats, put a ruffle maybe where the Latino doesn’t have one. Then farm the patterns out to the Bronx and Jersey, lower Miami and Pennsylvania, where they sew in a label like ‘Valenciana.’ Then you wholesale the batch at a third of the price and everybody’s happy—except the Latino. But there’s not a fucking thing he can do that’d be worth his time in court because for the most part it’s legal.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”

“Well, a guy would have to plow through a road of
chazzerai
to prove it
wasn’t
legal.”

“Sadly, that’s true.”

“Hey, don’t get me wrong! We provide the merchandise and a service for thousands of nice li’l ole housewives who can’t afford that Paris crap. And I earn my bread, ole Yankee Doodle. Take that wrinkled old broad I was with; she owns a half-dozen specialty shops in Cologne and Düsseldorf, and now she’s looking into Bonn. Let me tell you, I waltz her.…”

The towns and small cities went by. Leverkusen … Lagenfeld … Hilden, and still the salesman went on, one tasteless anecdote leading to the next, his voice grating, his comments repetitive.

“
Wir kommen in fünf Minuten in Essen an!
”

It happened in Essen.

The commotion came first but it was not sudden. Instead, it grew in volume as an immense rolling wave gathers force approaching a ragged coastline, a sustained crescendo culminating in the crash over the rocks. The embarking passengers all seemed to be talking excitedly, with one another, heads turned, necks craned to listen to the voices coming from several transistor radios. Some were held against the ear, others with the volume turned up at the request of those nearby. The more crowded the train became, the louder everyone talked as the conversations were almost drowned out by the shrill, metallic voices of the newscasters. A thin young girl in the uniform of a private school, her books in a canvas beach bag and a blaring radio in her left hand, sat down in the seat in front of Joel and the salesman. Passengers gathered around, shouting, apparently asking the girl if she could make the radio louder.

“What’s it all about?” asked Converse, turning to the obese man.

“Wait a minute!” replied the salesman, leaning forward with difficulty and in greater discomfort rising partially from the seat. “Let me listen.”

There was a perceptible lull, but only among the crowd around the girl, who now held up the radio. Suddenly there was a burst of static and Converse could hear two voices, in addition to that of the newscaster, a remote report from somewhere away from the radio. And then Joel heard the words spoken in English; they were nearly impossible to pick out, as an interpreter kept rushing in to give the German translation.

“A full inquiry … 
Eine vollständiges Verhör
… entailing all security forces … 
sie erfordert alle Sicherheitskräfte
… has been ordered … 
wurde veranlasst
.”

Converse grabbed the salesman’s coat. “What is it—tell me what happened?” he asked rapidly.

“That
nut
hit again!… Wait, they’re going back. Lemme hear this.” Again there was a short burst of static and the excited newscaster came back on the air. A terrible sense of dread spread through Joel as the onslaught of German crackled out of the small radio, each phrase more breathless than the last. Finally the guttural recitation ended. The passengers straightened their backs. Some stood up, turning to one another, their voices raised in counterpoint, excited conversations resumed. The salesman lowered himself into the seat, breathing hard not, apparently, because of the alarming news he had heard but because of sheer physical discomfort.